Post mix and pre mix food and beverage systems are known in the art for blending and dispensing a food or beverage concentrate with a diluent such as water. Typical post mix dispensers are designed to separately store and automatically combine at the time of dispensing, a concentrate and hot or cold water at a predetermined ratio in order to consistently produce a beverage product which is acceptable for consumption. One type of commercially available post mix dispenser is disclosed in assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,963 issued to Gorski et al on Oct. 11, 1994.
In contrast, pre mix dispensers include at least one and usually two bowls for holding, blending, temperature treating and dispensing relatively large amounts of various pre mixed concentrate and water mixtures. In some instances, the pre mix dispenser is equipped with cooling equipment to enable dispensing of a non-carbonated, chilled or iced drink, the latter being known as a slush, slurpee, or granita. In other cases, the cooling equipment is replaced by a heating arrangement so that metered quantities of hot liquid food or beverages, such as coffee, hot chocolate, tea, or soup may be delivered.
The disadvantage of the pre mix dispenser, especially one that is used to serve a cold beverage or a slush, is that when its bowl becomes empty, one can no longer dispense and sell products until a new batch of beverage is hand-mixed, poured into the bowl and is chilled to the proper desired serving temperature. With a slush-type beverage, this length of cooling time can be as long as one hour. The downtime required to effect refilling of the pre mix dispensers results in lost sales which are most detrimental during periods of peak demand.
It has been recognized that it would be advantageous to provide pre mix dispensers with an arrangement for automatically preparing measured amounts of concentrate and water, and supplying the resulting food and beverages into the bowls of the pre mix dispensers. Such an arrangement must function to automatically and periodically operate to maintain a consistent and nearly full supply of concentrate and water mixture whereby the practice of mixing full supplies of liquid beverages and food products in separate vessels and manually transferring these products into the bowls of pre mix dispensers for cooling or heating can be avoided.
While post mix and pre mix dispensers deliver products formed from both liquid and dry concentrates mixed with water, many vendors prefer the use of dry concentrate (powdered, freeze dried or granulated) because of its condensed form and profitability. Use of dry concentrate, however, does present some solubility problems due to the presence of sugar in the dry concentrate and the tendency of the concentrate to become sticky or lumpy in the presence of excess moisture, such as from a high humidity environment.
One machine which is specially designed and constructed to intermittently operate and mix together measured volumes of water and dry, powdered or granulated beverage concentrate and to deliver beverages established thereby into a supply tank of a related beverage dispensing machine is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,488,664 issued Dec. 18, 1984 to Cleland. In this patent, an attachment unit is removably engaged on the open top of a supply tank of a pre mix beverage dispensing machine, and operates to replenish the machine when the liquid level in the tank lowers to a predetermined level and until the level rises to a predetermined high level.
There are two major disadvantages to the above-described, top mounted attachment unit. One problem is that when the attachment unit is set on top of the pre mix dispenser which sits on a standard thirty-six inch countertop, one must be well over six feet tall to safely refill and/or remove the attachment unit for both its cleaning as well as the cleaning of the pre mix dispenser bowls. The other major disadvantage is that some dry concentrate bases do not mix well with ambient temperature water and some also require mechanical high speed motor mixing to ensure solubility. The Cleland attachment unit utilizes ambient temperature water and has no mechanical mixing capability as the dry concentrate and water mixture is being prepared.
Because of the disadvantages discussed above, owners of beverage dispensing machines have expressed a desire for an apparatus that can be connected to and located remote, that is spaced apart from, the pre mix dispenser. More particularly, there is a need for a replenishing post mix dispenser to be positioned, for example, under the countertop, behind the pre mix dispenser, or in another room. In addition, it is desirable that such a replenishing dispenser contemplate the use of hot or cold water as well as a high speed mixing device so as to minimize any solubility problems in forming the food or beverage mixture. It is further desirable to prevent moisture from forming lumps in the dry concentrate. It is also desirable to provide the replenishing dispenser with a pump-equipped reservoir for ensuring the solubility of the formed mixture and improving the deliverability of the mixture to the pre mix dispenser. Furthermore, it is desirable to provide a replenishing dispenser which receives water from a standard water line or from a self-contained source, so as to establish portability of the post mix dispenser.